Scott Bennett – the author of “Pozieres: The Anzac Story” (2011), shared information about The Menin Gate Memorial. He took to his official social media account and highlighted the number of soldiers who died in Flanders’ fields in the Great War.
The Menin Gate Memorial: The Portland stone walls of the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres lists 55,000 soldiers who died in Flanders‘ fields in the Great War, but their bodies were never recovered or identified.
It can be challenging for a visitor’s gaze to penetrate the endless lists. Yet by focussing on an individual name, you can better understand that a single inscription represents an individual person who was loved and grieved for.
Mimi stands beside the name of Josiah Allen, a 27-year-old clean-living bloke who was a member of Gin Gin’s local temperance movement and a devout Methodist church goer.
Along with this, Josiah suffered the ignominy of being lost in the Flanders mud, Belgium, along with thousands of others, when a shell burst and killed him at Messines Ridge on June 7 1917.
Tragically, Josiah’s parents, William and Sarah, they also lost two other sons in the Great War – Ned and Ernest. Their remains were also never recovered or identified. The Allen family believed Sarah died some years after the war of a ‘broken heart’.
The affordable travel has made everything easier for the people, and the people express gratitude because it is not possible for relatives of soldiers to more easily connect with them, as well as for students such as Mimi to demonstrate that their sacrifice will never be forgotten.
